Though its styling is far from a wow, the Mercedes S550 is a masterpiece of gadgetry and gee-whiz innovation

THE REDESIGNED 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-class, the serene, cetacean presence you see before you, this sack of krill, is probably the world's most technologically rich automobile.

Though the Mercedes-Benz S550 is far from being pretty, it could one day be pronounced the best car in the world, says Rumble Seat columnist Dan Neil.

The company's new flagship sedan/limousine/state car requires the services of 60 onboard computers, up to 100 servo motors (operating, among other things, the powered door and trunk closures, seat-belt tensioners, and the elaborate articulation of the seats), and more than 500 LED lighting units, from its taillamps to its (amazing, game-changing) headlamps. Under the flat, brooding instrument binnacle are two high-res, 12.3-inch TFT screens, arrayed cinema style in a single, broad bezel that, at night, floats in a pool of suffused LED backlighting, like something signed out from the Starfleet motor pool. Holy mother of awesome.

Photos: 2014 Mercedes-Benz S550

Click to view slideshow. Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz head of design, told me that the new S-class was the "best car in the world." I am not ready to make such a pronouncement, and I'd be unlikely to do so anyway about a car that looks like it was swallowed by a manatee. But the S-class is unquestionably a tour de force, a showy, almost arrogant display of auto-making genius (assuming it all holds together). The important thing here is Stuttgart's willingness to invoke "best car" verbiage, which historians associate with icons such as the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Duesenberg SJ, Mercedes-Benz 300SL, Bugatti Veyron and—a late entry on the list—Tesla. Cheeky monkeys.

For four decades and five generations of the S-class, the car has traditionally been the company's technology icebreaker, introducing now-fundamental systems such as stability control and ABS braking, adaptive cruise control and adaptive body-roll control. In that time, S-class product planning has also become increasingly a victim of its own rhetoric, with each generation obliged to blow buyers' minds anew, sometimes with trivial, half-baked "technologies" (the shambolic first edition of the infrared night-vision system comes to mind).

This new car represents a genuine break with the past on several fronts, and they are, in descending order of importance: active safety; cabin materials and construction; in-cabin electronic functions and amenities. Indeed, the sheer weight of innovation in this car—more than 2,000 patents flutter in its slipstream—is itself theatrical, a message to consumers and competitors alike: A giant has awakened. Checkbooks, run for your lives.

It almost doesn't matter where you start. Would you like to know about the perfume injection integrated into the cabin air-filtration system, offering one of four fragrances (human-factors approved, I'm sure) held in a cut-glass reservoir in the glove compartment? German engineering meets John Waters's Odorama.

Here's a fun one: Magic Body Control, which uses stereoscopic cameras integrated into the windshield header to read the road ahead, looking for shadow and contrast that might indicate a perturbation in pavement, so it can instantly adjust the air suspension in anticipation of the bump. The "magic" part is that it seems to make speed bumps disappear.

‘Pity about the styling. This isn't within 10,000 kilometers of 'pretty.'’

Among other things, Mercedes is attempting to reassert its incumbency as the safest car in the world. To that end, a fully equipped S550 (figure $135,000) is like a freaking Awacs plane, with the aforementioned stereo cameras, long-range thermal imaging (Night Vision Assist with active pedestrian illumination), and a dozen or so ultrasonic and radar-based sensors that create a multi-wavelength, 3-D map of the world around the car.

This "sensor fusion" is fed into the car's driver-assist systems, including: Distronic Plus; active lane-keeping; all-speed adaptive cruise control ("Stop and Go Pilot") that follows the flow of congested traffic without driver intervention; and active lane-departure correction, which nudges the car back in a lane via asymmetric application of the front brakes. These technologies, which Mercedes collectively calls "Intelligent Drive," basically give the car situational awareness.

Example: With its array of rear sensors, the car can detect the threat of an impending rear collision and react, by going into crash-hardening mode, cinching down the passenger seat belts, rolling the windows up, and locking the brakes, to reduce the delta-v—the violence of the crash, in other words—and minimize the risk of the car's being thrown forward into another vehicle or an intersection. In Euro-spec cars, the brilliant LED taillights strobe to alert the driver of the closing car (U.S. regs currently limit strobing lights to emergency and official vehicles).

I know what you're thinking: Who knew you could be this fascinated and bored at the same time? But the degree to which all this approaches a reliable, robust, autopilot feature—Mercedes goes so far as to use the phrase "semiautonomous"—makes the S-class historically significant. Daimler has invested heavily in driver-assist and crash-avoidance/mitigation-systems research over the past decade, as well as advanced research in human factors engineering. Now the company is beginning to commercialize these investments.

Take note of the moment: Mercedes is the original, the ultimate old-established firm, with a lot of stakeholders, stepping into relatively unknown territory with new technologies of high criticality. The company already has fully autonomous prototype vehicles in hand, using technologies that in some cases have yet to be approved by safety regulators in Europe and North America. For example, the S-class's Adaptive High Beam Assist can pinpoint the position of an oncoming vehicle and activate tiny shutters built into the headlamps to block, in real time, the portion of high-beam that would otherwise shine on and blind the other driver. This system outpaces current U.S. headlight regulations, which require a separate switch setting for high and low beams.

But whether it's five years or 10, commercially available autonomous automobiles are coming, and Mercedes has made the strategic decision to lead the way.

Pity about the styling. Formal, ceremonial, heavy, a preemie Maybach. This thing isn't within 10,000 kilometers of "pretty." But it's worth noting that the smooth-skinned S-class achieves a 0.24 coefficient of drag, making it more aerodynamically efficient than a Toyota Prius. And that's with the S-class's new grille, which is 30% bigger than the previous grille and the largest as a percentage of the vehicle's frontal area among all cars in this category, according to Mr. Wagener. I knew it was 30% more something.

A cynic would take one look at the chromic effrontery of the S-class's new grille and think: China. The Middle Kingdom is now the world's largest car market, and the luxury audience there has a measurable preference for big grilles. But that is to discount Mr. Wagener's own orientalism, his love of material richness, evocations of tradition and electronic ornament. It's this aesthetic that has shaped the S-class's sculptural cabin, with its breaking waves of burled walnut and French-stitched leather flowing into the doors, pulls and integrated grab handles. The central band of wood, shaped like an archer's recurve bow, is perfection, and the details just keep coming: the lustrous aluminum switchcaps, the polished-metal air vents (note the delicate "click" as you move the vanes to center), the console-mounted, central rotary-controller knob.

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The S-class cabin deploys more than 300 LEDs—according to Mercedes-Benz, this is the first passenger car since Edison that uses no incandescent light bulbs—allowing the designers to paint the cabin with light, gathering it in gentle pools for illumination. Drivers can choose one of seven ambient lighting schemes. I like tangerine, myself.

Well, does it even have an engine? Indeed it does. U.S. buyers will first see the S-class as the S550, with a twin-turbo, 4.6-liter, 449-hp V8 under the hood and a seven-speed automatic, in either rear-drive or all-wheel-drive configurations. Globally, the car will be available in short- and long-wheelbase configurations (North America, LWB only), with a variety of powerplants, from the screaming, AMG-built 5.5-liter, 577-hp biturbo V8 to a thrifty diesel hybrid. I'll be driving some of these cars in the coming year, with more thorough road testing to come. For the moment I would describe the S-class as a sumo ninja, moving through the world with agile heft and great stealth.

Perhaps after a few more turns at the wheel, I, too, could pronounce the S-class the best car in the world. For now, I can say for sure, it's certainly good enough.

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